who had come on board, poured holy water into the sea and prayed, saying, ‘Lord, vouchsafe calm and quiet weather to all them that journey by sea’; after which prayer the Patriarch handed the ring to the Doge, who dropped
Carrer, Annali.
it into the sea just where the holy water had been poured, saying, ‘We espouse thee, O Sea, in token of perpetual sovereignty.’
The guns of the fortresses thundered out a salute, and all the thousands of spectators cheered for Saint Mark, and all the young men waved flags; then the whole company began to throw flowers, freshly cut, from boat to boat, and the Patriarch presented great silver dishes full of flowers to the Doge; and all went ashore at San Nicola on the Lido to hear the pontifical high mass, after which every man went home to his own house.
That was the ceremony at which the Venetians assisted in 1796, little guessing that they saw it for the last time. A few months later a vandal mob
Rom. x. 305; Mutinelli, Lessico and Ult.
beached the Bucentaur on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and stripped it of all its ornaments, to burn them and get the gold. The hull was then armed with four heavy old guns, and was turned into a sort of floating battery and sailors’ prison at the entrance of the harbour. On her stern was painted her new name ‘Idra,’ the Hydra, and there she rotted for years. A few fragments of the old vessel are now preserved in the Arsenal. More than two hundred men worked at reducing the Bucentaur and the two big carved boats of the Signory to the democratic standard of beauty.
The last pilot of the Bucentaur was Andrea Chiribini, who, like all his predecessors, called himself ‘admiral,’ and was a ruffian not worth the rope with
Mutinelli, Ult.; Bembo, Ben. 265.
which he should have been hanged when he was young. He was one of the worst types in the Venetian revolution; and after living all his life on the bounty of the Signory, he was the first to help in breaking up the Bucentaur, and in sacking the Arsenal. In order to reward him for these noble acts of patriotism, and in the absence of appropriate funds, he was given a magnificent carved jewel of oriental chalcedony from the treasure of Saint Mark. The talisman did not bring the fellow luck. After wandering about for nearly thirty years, living more or less dishonestly by his wits,